


when you've got a hundred voices singing

by folkloricfeel



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-19 19:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folkloricfeel/pseuds/folkloricfeel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They want to start a strike, and maybe it'll turn into a revolution. In which Zayn is the leader of Brooklyn, Liam loves his Manhattan boys, and Louis is about to take down a corporate juggernaut with the help of a curly-haired kid who just stormed into all their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when you've got a hundred voices singing

**Author's Note:**

> Newsies AU. I saw [this prompt](http://1dkinkmeme.livejournal.com/648.html?thread=515976#t515976) on the kink meme within days of getting into this fandom and I knew I would always have to write this, even back then. I blame the existence of this on years and years of using Newsies as the counterpoint by which to compare all my other fandoms. This fandom makes me so damn self-indulgent it's ridiculous.

_a little birdy told me jacky-boy's playin' like he's going on strike._

"They want to go on strike," Liam says, leaning his elbow against the lookout, and he's not even sure Zayn can hear him from all the way down here, but maybe he's not saying it for Zayn in the first place.

"I know," Zayn says, both feet dangling through slats of wood and over the edge of the tower, and Liam can see the tufts of breath off his lips in the night air as he sighs. Zayn would know; Liam's not sure he sounds happy about it, though. "'Course they do." Liam rolls the unlit cigar in his hand around between his thumb and forefinger, smudges of tobacco darkening the sides of his fingers, and Zayn pulls his knees up loosely to his chest.

"Louis is serious about this, you know," Liam tells him, leaning his back against one of the tower's legs.

"I know," Zayn nods, eyes fixed out over the horizon, over the water in the direction of Manhattan's lights.

"I mean it," Liam says, hardly above a whisper, letting his voice carry up to Zayn, because Brooklyn is quiet enough for that at this time of night. "I've never seen Louis this serious about something before." Liam likes Brooklyn best this time of the night. Brooklyn's tense during the day, wound too tightly to ever feel comfortable, and its chaos in the evening isn't the good kind, not the kind Liam's used to back at home in the Manhattan lodging house. But Brooklyn now, their Brooklyn like this, is slow and contemplative, much like the way Zayn takes his care to come to thoughts and words, and it's dangerous how much Liam could get used to this. It's dangerous how much he already has.

"Louis can be serious when he wants to be, y'know," Zayn says, and it's true, Zayn would know most of all. Zayn can read Louis better than anyone, Liam thinks, sometimes. It's probably a product of the leader thing, the undercurrent of understanding that comes of asking two bullheaded teenage boys to keep two vastly different boroughs at peace, he assumes, mostly because he's never fully been able to bring himself to ask otherwise.

"I know he can," Liam says, maybe too defensively, "but it's different, this time around. You haven't seen how he talks about this. You haven't seen what Harry's brought out of him over the past few weeks, Zayn."

"Yeah?" Zayn looks down at Liam from his perch atop the tower, and Liam nods.

"Yeah," Liam says. Zayn is watching him, studying him from above, and Liam rolls the cigar at a faster rhythm, back and forth, brown ash rubbing into the crevices of his skin. "He says—he says the two of them are going to Cowell's offices. Tomorrow. Making their demands heard."

Zayn sighs and hops off his place at the perch, scaling down the rope on the side of the lookout, and Liam startles a little as he jumps down the last few feet to meet him. "What's he going to say, yeah? Just walk in there and insist they give back their tenth of a cent or else because he's Tomlinson?" Zayn's body sinks back against the other side of the wooden leg. "Won't matter anyway, Cowell's just a figurehead."

"Like you can tell me you wouldn't try to argue it on the grounds of Brooklyn," Liam scoffs.

"I'd have a plan," Zayn says, "s'what I can tell you." The breeze off the water is picking up, and Liam shivers; Zayn turns toward him. "You been out here all night?"

"On my way back from the tracks," Liam tells him, "there was a late race today. Turf course, a graded stakes deal, I couldn't have missed the business. Would've been irresponsible of me to lose out on that kind of money."

Zayn's tongue pokes through his lips and he looks like he's going to say something; when it turns out to be, "c'mon, let's walk," Liam's fairly certain that wasn't it, but he's more than happy to oblige. He shoves his hands into his pockets, balancing the cigar in his mouth, and Zayn kicks at the post and nods his head off in the direction of the eastward docks, turning and motioning for Liam to follow.

It's dangerous, how far Liam would follow Zayn. Dangerous how far he might, one of these nights, one of their walks.

"What does Niall think about it?" Zayn asks, finally, when they come up to the edge of the dock. Liam runs a hand through his hair.

"Niall thinks whatever Louis thinks, mostly," he says, and Zayn laughs a little at that, because it's true, "but I think he's angry, too. Angrier than I've seen him." Zayn kneels down, squats at the edge of the dock, and Liam hangs his feet over the edge, just above the water. "He keeps saying we should hold a rally, says he's going to go out to see Danielle and ask her if she can get us the theater for a night."

Zayn nods at that, pulling the pocketknife out that he keeps in his shirtpocket. "A rally could be good," he muses.

"Well, I think Niall really just wants an excuse to get a few beers in him and hang himself off the rafters and sing," Liam jokes, and Zayn starts idly carving something into the wood post beside him with his knife. "But I like the idea of a rally, too."

"It could be good," Zayn reiterates, looking out over the water, then pauses. "What d'you think of this Harry?"

"I think he's a good kid," Liam says. "He's got a good head on his shoulders, comes from a good family, you know. He came to us in the first place because his father got hurt, did you know that? He wanted to work so his sister didn't have to, left school and all for it."

"That's respectable," Zayn agrees.

"And he's got a way with words," Liam continues, watching Zayn's hands carve the outline of a key, like the one he always wears around his neck, into the post. "He's a strange fellow, and he follows Louis around in a daze half the time, but he knows what to say when it counts." Liam rocks his feet over the ripples, the fabric at the toes of his shoes stained with wetness. "And I think," he says, carefully, "I think he's good for Louis."

"Yeah?" Zayn asks.

"Yeah," Liam says, and Zayn gives him a half-smile in the darkness. "I think—he gives Louis something to fight for. Something he's wanted to fight for for a long time now."

Something flickers behind Zayn's eyes, something of his usual restlessness and a little more. "Let's go out to the bridge," he says, and Liam had been hoping for that, he can't lie.

They walk up and around to the bridge, the two of them, mostly in silence, because sometimes they don't need words between the two of them, and Zayn's cane clicks against time with their steps. "Sometimes I think you only carry that thing because it makes you look good," Liam grins, breaking the silence as they ascend the stairs up toward the bridge, and he gives Zayn a playful shove with his elbow, because they both know it's true. It has to be getting toward daylight by now, too far toward it for Liam's liking; he'll probably have to get his papers from the Brooklyn distribution center at this rate, and he hates that, hates missing out on the time that he gets to spend with his boys, but it's a price he'll pay for time for just the two of them. They don't get enough moments like this, not with boroughs to keep at bay and rumblings of strikes.

They walk out to the crest of the bridge, the halfway point that divides their boroughs, just like they always do, and Zayn rests his cane on the ground and leans both of his elbows on the railing. Liam rests his own beside him, head down, craning his neck to watch the morning's first barge breaking the horizon on the river.

"You don't have to do this, you know," Zayn says, and at first, Liam thinks he means the strike, but there's a concern in Zayn's eyes that tells him otherwise, a compassion he doesn't even usually let himself show for his own boys. "This—" Zayn waves a hand back at the road behind them, or more shoves it back in frustration, really, "all this commute and all." It's the game they play; they have this conversation once a month, at least, maybe even more so as of late, it seems.

"I know," Liam says, and he knows Zayn knows too, knows Zayn knows he'll never stop going out to Sheepshead and back into Manhattan every day, no matter what persuasive tactics Brooklyn's leader might employ to sway him otherwise. Zayn knows Liam needs his space, needs the time in his own head as much as he needs to be around the energy of the boys he's grown to care so deeply for in his years at the lodging house.

"There are closer houses to Sheepshead," Zayn says, "I'm just saying, yeah?"

"I know," Liam says, and nods his head like he's mulling the thought over, even if they both know he could never leave Louis, never leave the people he loves.

"Just don't forget it, 'kay," Zayn says, like it counts more than just having numbers for Brooklyn's ranks.

"I won't," Liam says, doing his best to convey that just because he knows where he's going to stay doesn't mean he won't stop thinking about it in the corners of his mind.

"Good," Zayn says, putting a hand on Liam's shoulder, and because it's still dark for a few more minutes, because there won't be passenger cars for another hour or so here, he hooks a finger through Liam's suspender and pulls him toward him, so fast that it knocks the breath straight out of Liam's chest when Zayn plants a hasty kiss just at the edge of Liam's lips. It's over as fast as Liam can process, and Zayn's elbow is back on the railing, his other arm reaching to pull a cigarette and match out of his pocket, like it never happened.

Liam's still got the cigar in his pocket, and he feels like he should take it out again, if Zayn's going to smoke, so he does, and goes back to his steady back-and-forth, back-and-forth, index-and-thumb. Anyone but Zayn, he knows, would ask if he wanted a light, but Zayn knows Liam only smokes when he should, knows it's mostly the weight of the cigar between his fingers that helps to calm his nervous habits. "You can tell Louis I'm thinking about it, if y'want to," Zayn says, which Liam knows means he's in for this strike, and if Zayn's in, Liam knows he will be, too.

"He'll probably come out to see you himself," Liam says, "you know Louis, has to do things his own way." Back-and-forth, back-and-forth. "And besides, I think he wants you to meet Harry."

"Yeah?" Zayn finds a swatch of wood at the joint of the railing to swipe his match across, and the light sparks in hot flickers against the final pretenses of night.

"Yeah," Liam says, watching a needle-thin trail of black smoke curling behind Zayn's motion as he brings the match to his lips.

"Huh," is Zayn's reply, but _if Tommo's got himself some newspaper bravery, Brooklyn can get behind that_ is all Liam can hear zigzagging off the cables and ricocheting out in both directions toward the boroughs.

The first signs of light are starting to spread over the horizon and onto the water, sharp edges of orange and soft hues of red, shards of yellow, and the match drops from Zayn's hand after he's lit his cigarette, and Liam watches it fall down to the water below, flickers and embers still sparking as it goes, and he knows Zayn's not about to let that flame go out on Brooklyn's watch.

And if it's good enough for Brooklyn, Liam supposes it's good enough for him, too.


End file.
